Mills, presses, crushers, and other crushing devices used to comminute material often include a crushing body or multiple crushing bodies that are configured to impact material to crush the material. Crushing bodies are often configured to grind the material between a surface of the crushing body and the surface of another crushing body such as the surface of a table, anvil or wall. Examples of such crushing devices may be appreciated from U.S. Pat. Nos. 252,755, 1,225,061, 1,589,302, 3,955,766, 3,964,717, 4,369,926, 4,485,974, 4,582,260, 5,203,513, 5,823,450, and 6,523,767. As another example, roller presses may have one or more rollers configured to impact material to grind the material. Each roller may include a wear surface. The wear surface may be attached to the roller. For instance, the wear surface of the roller may be welded to the roller.
A wear surface typically experiences wear as material is comminuted by the wear surface. After a period of time, the wear surface may experience wear sufficiently that it is unable to crush material or experiences a great reduction in crushing ability. For example, portions of the wear surface may erode or become broken during use and subsequently requires replacement or repair.
Some wearable surfaces used in devices configured to comminute material may be appreciated from U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,477. Such wearable surfaces include insert members embedded in a surface of a cylindrical press roll. The insert members may project radially into the surface of the roll. The insert members are configured to crush material. Rollers with such a wear surface may require a relatively intensive amount of labor to embed the insert members into the surface of a roller. These types of rollers may also have a relatively limited capacity for insitu repair, such as repair while the rollers are on equipment in a production line of a manufacturing facility.
Other wearable surfaces used in crushing devices include hexagonal tiles, such as the tiles disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,755,033. A tiled surface can include tiles that have gaps or recesses between the tiles. The tiles are affixed to a base material and are harder than the base material. Such tiled wearable surfaces are usually not capable of being repaired while the wearable surface is positioned in a plant or processing line for grinding material. The inability to conduct in-situ repairs on such products can be a major hindrance for a manufacturer and can greatly increase the cost of maintaining or repairing such devices.
Previously filed U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/766,110 which has been allowed discloses crushing devices that utilize crushing bodies that have wearable surfaces formed from explosion forging processes and explosion welding processes. The owner of the rights in the present application also owns the rights to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/766,110 and this present application has some inventors that are also the inventors named in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/766,110. The entirety of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/766,110 is incorporated by reference herein.
The crushing bodies disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/766,110 may be sized and configured for use in a wide array of comminution devices such as crushing devices or grinding devices. Among other things, that application discloses a method of making crushing bodies by explosively forging hard inserts within at least one metal structure to form a crushing body. However, to subsequently repair such devices may require replacement of segments of a crushing body. The replacement of such segments is an improvement over many current methods used to repair embodiments of crushing devices. That being said, we have determined that it would be even more preferred to permit a repair of damaged inserts on an even smaller scale, such as on an individual insert basis. This is particular true when it is often the case that individual inserts in a crushing body may be damaged. The ability to repair individual inserts could be much preferred over the replacement of segments of a crushing body in some applications since it would take less time to perform such repair work. Such decreased time would also reduce the cost associated with that repair work as it would reduce the amount of down time the crushing device being repaired would experience.
A method of repairing a wearable surface is needed that may permit in-situ repairs of wearable surfaces for crushing bodies of a crushing device and other devices configured to comminute material. Preferably, such a wearable surface is able to permit in-situ repairs that can take place while equipment is in a product line of a manufacturing facility and can permit relatively short lead times for manufacturing.
A method of forming a wearable surface of a crushing body is also needed. Preferably, the wearable surface formed from that method can also subsequently permit the use of the method for repairing that surface.